by Nick Webb
Granger muttered under his breath. “We don’t have time for this. Shelby, we need to get over to the station and figure out what we’re doing. Let’s go.” He started for the doors, glancing back to Lieutenant Diaz. “Lieutenant, monitor the area, keep an eye out for Fishtail. See what you can do to help. Send a shuttle out for Ballsy if he gets in trouble—”
Proctor cut him off. “Ballsy might think we’re Swarm. In fact, he will think we’re Swarm—I mean, here we are, cozying up to what he would think is a Swarm ship, at a Russian station, with a Russian fleet, all one big happy family. No matter what we say, given his disorientation, he’s not going to trust us. Plus, we already know what he thinks. He’s told us as much.”
“Good point,” said Granger. “Either way, Lieutenant Diaz, keep your eyes on what’s going down out there. Call me if you need me. Hopefully we’ll be back soon, with some answers.”
He and Proctor rushed down to the shuttle bay and boarded the waiting craft. Escape pods from the Warrior were pushed off to the side of the bay, and it took some delicate flying to ease the shuttle out the doors, but soon they were cutting through the void of space that separated them from the station. It grew larger and larger in their cockpit window, until it filled their whole view.
“Polrum Krull says the main command deck can be reached through that docking port,” said Granger, pointed toward a spot on the sensor monitor. Several kilometers away he saw another shuttle, this one from the dreadnought, approach a nearby port and latch on. “That’ll be Polrum,” he said. Their own shuttle approached, slowed, and eased into position. The docking clamps latched into place and the distant hiss of air told him the airlock had engaged.
Granger sprang out of the airlock as soon as the hatch swung open. When he passed through the door into the hallway beyond, Colonel Barnard was waiting for him. The other man saluted. “Captain,” he said in greeting. “This appears to be the executive complex. Looks like Malakhov himself and his senior commanders used this wing as their base of operations when they were in this sector.”
“How do you know?”
Barnard waved his arm through another door, indicating they pass through. In the space beyond was what looked to be an atrium, with a fish tank, photographs of the Russian president hanging from the wall, and potted trees and hanging plants.
And lying against one of the granite walls, blood pooled up beneath him on the marble floor, a body. Or rather, what was left of it. Granger recognized the face of the late Vice President Isaacson. The rest of his body, what remained of it, was raw and gouged, with limbs twisted at odd angles. An arm was missing. Across the atrium, slumped against the far wall, lay what looked like Ambassador Volodin.
“What do you suppose happened here?” said Proctor. Her face was white with the sight of the gore, but to her credit she picked her way through the carnage, scouring the room for clues.
“Whatever it was, I suspect it came as somewhat of a shock to Mr. Isaacson,” deadpanned Granger. He never liked the man, in spite of his recent closeness to Avery.
“Granger,” said Polrum Krull, who came through the door to the docking port hallway. Several of the marines spun around and readied their assault rifles. Granger waved them off.
“You’ve been here before?”
She nodded. “Yes. Among my Children are experts at the Russian quantum singularity technology, and I helped integrate the systems into the Valarisi ships.” She went toward one of the doors in the atrium. “I believe we can access the database and remote quantum-field control through here.”
Granger followed closely behind, with Proctor in step. Beyond the door was a large room with one giant viewport on the other side, nearly filling the entire wall. Other doors lined the walls, including monitors, control stations, a large beautiful oak desk, and more pictures of Malakhov. The man clearly loved looking at himself.
“Through here,” said Polrum Krull. In one of the rooms branching off from the office with the oak desk and giant viewport, she sat down at a control station. “I can access records of all quantum singularities from here, I believe.”
Granger watched lines of information stream past on the monitor. All in Cyrillic letters, of course. “You read Russian?”
“Several of my Children do. They read and interpret for me.”
“Is that how you’re speaking to me now?”
Polrum Krull looked up in surprise. “Of course. I myself don’t have time to learn everything. But there is always one or two of my Children willing to throw themselves at a task I do not have time or energy for.” She looked down at the monitor. “Ah. Just as we suspected. One hour ago, singularity 5521b was launched at a large, moon-sized mass of material that was orbiting Penumbra Three at a slightly lower elevation than this station.”
“And the other side?” He knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from the Skiohra herself.
“5521a is assigned to a Valarisi carrier, which is—” she studied the readout for a moment. “In the Terran system. Orbiting Earth.”
“We’ve got to stop it,” said Granger. “Can we somehow send a signal from here? Make the carrier reroute? Or disable the carrier’s singularity control system?”
Polrum Krull shook her head. “The connection we had with the Valarisi is closed. We dare not open that door again. And even when we shared the Ligature, we had no control over them. Quite the reverse.”
“Can’t you feed them false information? Like the Dolmasi did with me? Maybe … maybe send them an image of all six of your dreadnoughts coming here to Penumbra and laying waste to the surface?”
“They won’t care, Captain. Remember, the Valarisi are not the Valarisi. The Swarm is not from our universe, as Scythia Krull told you. Why would they care if we kill some portion of the Valarisi down on the surface? There’s no way we could eradicate all of them down there, not even with all of our combined strength. The Valarisi would slip through the cracks—the literal cracks in the surface, seeping down deep into the crust. We’d never destroy all of them, and so the Swarm doesn’t care what we do to the Valarisi as long as some of it survives. No, Granger, the solution is clear. We need to send a singularity to Earth, intercept the mass, send it back here through the singularity’s sibling, and follow through with Malakhov’s plan.”
Granger shook his head. “No. No matter what we do to the surface of Penumbra, it won’t change the fact that the Swarm can still reach across meta-space and control the Valarisi. We need to find that link, the one with the hundred and fifty year cycle, and destroy it.”
Polrum Krull nodded. “Yes, but where is that link? Ever since our liberation from the Valarisi two days ago, our entire civilization has debated this, to no avail. We simply have no idea how they had been entering our universe before the Russians unleashed their singularities.”
It was a problem. One they had to solve fast—the mass of debris was most likely approaching Earth even as they spoke. Depending on the time dilation or compression on its trip through the singularity, it could have already arrived by now, destroying humanity’s home.
Proctor had stepped out for a minute, but now ran back through the door. “Tim, you need to come see this.”
The look on her face was all he needed to rush out of the room, follow her past the giant viewport, past Malakhov’s desk, and into what looked like a hospital room.
He couldn’t believe it.
There he was. Captain Granger—old, sick, frail, white and gaunt with disease.
And most definitely not in the past, as Kharsa had led him to believe.
He’d come to the future.
Chapter 65
Executive Command Center, Russian Singularity Production Facility
High Orbit, Penumbra Three
“Shelby, am I dreaming?” he said. It was surreal, to stand above yourself, looking down, seeing you, your own body, sleeping. It was like a near-death experience. There he was, on an operating table after a failed attempt at resuscitation and now his spirit was rising up ov
er his body, looking down. Except he really was there—he was both.
“It’s really you, Tim.” She examined the readouts on the monitors nearby. “And you’re not doing too well. Cachexia is setting in—the cancer is wasting your tissues. Acidosis, sepsis, muscle wasting. I’m no doctor, but I’d expect your organs to start failing any day now. Maybe any hour.”
“But Kharsa said that I’d been a friend before. That I’d been Swarm. Why haven’t the Russians converted me over?”
“We’ll have to ask Malakhov,” she said.
“You’re a little late for that.” Colonel Barnard had entered the room. The look on his face told Granger that there was even more news. “Found him at the bottom of long drop over in the bay. And that’s not all we found. Captain Granger, the Old Bird is here.”
It made sense, of course—if the old Granger was here, then the Constitution was here, too. “Go aboard. Secure it,” he said.
“Aye, aye, sir.” Barnard stepped out the door, talking into his commlink to issue orders to his marines.
Granger turned back to Proctor. “Shelby, look. If we don’t do something, I’m going to die. And, I may not be a scientist, but I’ve read my share of science fiction. Aren’t we in for a world of headache-inducing timeline disruptions if we let that happen? It’s like I’m killing my grandfather here—how can I be dead in the past, but alive now?”
“I—I don’t know, Tim. All theoretical work on timeline disruption is just that—theory. Some theoretical physicists think that due to quantum effects, two universes branch off from each other every time a new quantum event happens, and given that a near-infinite number of quantum events happen just within our own bodies in any given second, they think that there are an infinity of universes parallel to ours, and that if our past timeline is disrupted it doesn’t affect us because for us, you and me, right here, it’s already happened. But his timeline,” she indicated the sleeping Granger, “will be affected. Same with all the time traveling that’s been going on lately, I suppose. You, Fishtail, Ballsy. Even all those chunks of rock sucked from the crust of Earth and all the other targeted worlds—they’ve all time traveled to a degree.”
Granger shook his head. “So, if I die here, our universe is unaffected?”
“Well, other theoretical physicists disagree. They say there is only one universe. Ours. And if we disrupt our past timeline, well, there’s disagreement even on that. Possibilities range from the timeline just resetting to the point at which the disruption happened—even though that sets up the possibility of temporal loops—or, well, I think the term is cataclysmic resolution.”
“That doesn’t sound pleasant.” Granger watched the monitor. His heart beat weakly, his blood pressure hovered at a terrifyingly low range. And yet, he remembered waking up on Proctor’s shoulder four months ago. Sure, he felt weak then, but in the days following he’d made a full recovery. He’d felt, well, amazing, compared to his final days with the cancer setting in. There was only one way that could happen. He turned to Proctor. “Inject me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I know you grabbed some of your research before we left the Warrior. You’ve got some Swarm matter, right? Inject me. Put me—put him—under Swarm control.”
He thought she was going to protest, to attempt to convince him there was another way. Instead, she nodded. “It will cure the cancer. Bring you back from the brink of death, just like Fishtail. But we’ll need to find the singularity pair that you came out of, and send you back through it. That should inactivate the virus.” She pulled a meta-syringe out of her pocket.
“Do it.”
She pressed the syringe up to the sleeping Granger’s neck, and a soft puff of air indicated the contents had been injected. Proctor opened a drawer and shuffled through the contents, searching for something, while Granger watched himself react to the virus.
Slowly, the color returned to his face. His heart rate increased on the monitor. The blood pressure rose. The levels of acid in his system began plummeting to normal levels as the virus began its work.
Proctor pulled something out of the drawer. “A sedative. We can’t just let you wake up now, can we? That would invite Swarm attention.”
Granger nodded. And right as the Granger lying on the table started opening his eyes, Proctor pressed the second syringe to his neck.
He flashed back to his own memories of the scene. There was the room—just as he remembered in his dreams. The tall viewport looking down on the planet. He was on his back, looking up at the overhanging lights, and he remembered feeling the presence of someone there. Someone behind him, standing just out of sight. Someone—that someone was him.
The heart rate on the monitor slowed as the sedative took effect, and the old Granger’s eyes fluttered shut.
“There. You’ll be asleep for awhile,” said Proctor. “Enough time for us to make some plans, at least.”
“Let’s get back to Polrum Krull. She can find the singularity pair that I came through, and we can see about sending me—him—back. And we still need to figure out what to do with the debris heading toward Earth—”
He paused, staring out the window. Now that he was here, where he’d been four months ago, the dreams—the memories—they were coming back more forcefully. He’d stood at that window, looking down at the planet. He remembered the feeling of nostalgia, that sense of home. With a start, he realized that Kharsa hadn’t been manipulating that part. He couldn’t create that feeling. He couldn’t force Granger to feel longing when he looked down at that planet. Perhaps Kharsa misdirected the feeling, altered the memory of what the world below actually looked like, made him remember a different planet—Kharsa’s planet.
But there was something else. The feeling was true—his homeworld, the Valarisi’s homeworld, that was indeed down there through the window, far below—and yet … that wasn’t the whole story. Somewhere, somehow, close by, was his true homeworld. Well, “homeworld” was too precise a word. His—the Swarm’s—origin, was close. Not the Valarisi—the liquid beings, but the actual Swarm. He remembered feeling that. Looking down on Penumbra, and simultaneously feeling longing for the surface, and longing for his true home, somewhere close by.
“What is it, Tim?”
“We’re missing something,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Just a feeling.” Before he could explain himself, a marine stepped into the room.
“Sir, message from Lieutenant Diaz. He says more sensor contacts have appeared in the debris field.”
Proctor and Granger looked at each other.
“Fishtail,” they both said.
The marine shook his head. “He said there were two new fighters that appeared. Both with transponder prefixes that correspond to the Constitution.”
Two fighters?
Chapter 66
Executive Command Center, Russian Singularity Production Facility
High Orbit, Penumbra Three
Granger and Proctor both left the old Granger, still knocked out from the tranquilizer, under the guard of two marines, and rushed back to where Polrum Krull was still rummaging around through the computer database. On another terminal nearby was a comm station. Proctor keyed in the appropriate frequency for the Victory’s bridge.
“Lieutenant Diaz, this is Granger. Report.”
“Diaz here. Sir, we just picked up two new contacts. Fishtail and Hotbox. Came out of two latent singularities in the debris field at roughly the same time.”
“Are they responding to hails?”
“Negative. Both fighter’s system’s are in bad shape—I doubt they even have life support. And they’re both on a collision course with a dense cloud of debris.”
“What’s the status of Volz’s fighter?”
Diaz paused, probably examining his sensor display. “Looks like he’s punched his accelerator and is moving to intercept them. But he’ll never save both. I don’t even know what he’ll do if he catches up with one of them
.”
Granger turned to Proctor. “Patch me through down to the fighter deck. Get me the CAG.”
A moment later, she nodded, and he realized right at that moment what a surreal moment it was—he was about talk to the new CAG, Lieutenant Volz, while the old Lieutenant Volz was out there in his fighter, on his way to attempt rescue of both Fishtail and Hotbox. “Lieutenant, scramble fighters. Get out there and help … you.”
“The fighter deck is a mess, sir. It’ll be a few minutes.”
Proctor shook her head. “They’ll never make it out there in time. Fishtail and Hotbox have less than two minutes before they run into that debris cloud.”
Polrum Krull glanced over to them. “The Benevolence is closer. My people have several shuttles ready to launch. I can notify them through the Ligature and they can attempt rescue of the fighter your pilot won’t be able to reach.”
Granger nodded. “Do it.” He turned to Proctor. “Get me Volz. The other Volz.” She nodded when the comm link was established.
“Lieutenant Volz, this is Captain Granger. I’m sending help. You go grab Fishtail. Don’t be alarmed when you see some shuttles that … well, they’re going to look like Swarm fighters, Ballsy. But they’re not. They’re coming to help.”
A laugh came through the comm channel. “Right. You really expect me to believe you, you bastards? A big Swarm carrier with a whole Russian fleet, and the ISS Constitution, all next to a big friggin' Russian space station. Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
Proctor whispered in his ear. “He probably can’t see that the ship out there is the Victory, not the Constitution. They look identical.”
Polrum Krull brought up a video feed on the monitor. At least twenty Skiohra shuttles had launched, and were approaching the three fighters. Volz’s craft was getting close to Fishtail’s, but suddenly it swiveled toward Hotbox. “No, you bastards. You’re not getting him. You’re not making him a friend.”
Granger grabbed the console with both hands in a tight grip. “Volz, you don’t know what you’re doing. We’re not Swarm. Don’t do something you’re going to regret.”
